Journaling Can Help to Relieve Stress

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the stress in your life? One easy and proven way to release your emotions - even the most frightening, painful, or sad ones - is to write them down. By getting your thoughts out of your head and putting them down in writing, you gain insights you’d otherwise never see. Letting go of bottled-up feelings with pen and paper has been shown to relieve stress and ease tension.

While many people use journaling to record a personal diary of their daily thoughts and experiences, the power of journaling goes beyond mere writing. Many therapists give journaling exercises to their clients to help relieve ongoing sources of stress. Researchers have found that ongoing journal writing is one of best ways to process problems.

Some of the benefits of journaling include:

  • Solve difficult problems. Some problems are hard to resolve from a first-person viewpoint. When you disassociate through writing, you have the opportunity to re-examine it from a third-person perspective. Sometimes the solution will be so obvious, you'll be surprised that you didn’t see it sooner.
  • Achieve clarity. Journaling about problems that you're unclear about is one of the best ways to find an answer. Should you marry your current partner? Should you find a new job? It’s amazing how much clearer things become when you explore them in writing.
  • Check your progress. Journaling is a great way to evaluate progress because you can go back and re-read journal entries from the past and see how much progress you've made.
When you first sit down to write about something, it's normal to feel anxious. Once you begin, uncomfortable feelings may initially arise. However, continuing to write about the same problem over the course of several days or weeks often enables you to work through difficult emotions and reach resolution or acceptance.

Consider the following before you begin:

  • Deeply troubling situations and events, such as domestic violence, rape, or direct exposure to acts of terrorism or war, are best explored with a therapist. For less traumatic situations, you can probably proceed on your own and seek professional help only if you feel you need the assistance.
  • If you’re basically healthy, choose the most stressful event or problem you currently have. It’s usually the one that dwell upon the most. If you think your current problems stem from past circumstances, write about the traumatic event that started the problem.
  • Consider letting go of the problem as you write down what you feel and why you feel that way.
  • Write for yourself, not others. Don’t worry about grammar or sentence structure. If you run out of things to say in the time allotted, feel free to repeat yourself.
  • If you're feeling generally disgruntled, write down a list of things you have to be grateful for. A gratitude list can include simple things that we sometimes overlook when we're stresses out, such as a warm bed and a hot meal.
  • Make a commitment to write in your journal for at least 15 minutes a day a few times each week.
If you encounter resistance, remind yourself that journaling is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to accelerate your personal development.

References
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Randi Fredricks is a Naturopathic Psychotherapist with a Doctorate in Naturopathy and a Masters in Psychology. She counsels clients at her office in San Jose, California. You can reach Randi at 408-315-0645 or contact her online. This article may be taken partially or in whole from Randi Fredricks' book Healing & Wholeness: Complementary and Alternative Therapies for Mental Health. Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems.


















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